Professional Documents
Culture Documents
When I first wrote this book, our family lived in one of the most
expensive parts of America—the San Francisco Bay Area. Most
families were spending half their income to pay the high rent or
mortgage. Consequently, most families needed both parents to
work just to get by. We were one of those families. According
to statistics, my husband and I were a middle-income family,
with my job providing half of our joint income. I was a career
woman who received much joy from her work.
After our first child was born, I began to feel God tugging
at my heart to stay home to raise our family. At first I thought I
hadn’t heard correctly. We couldn’t live in the Bay Area on half
of our joint income. At least that’s what we believed. Trying to
interpret what God was saying to me, I arranged a job-sharing
program where I worked part time. We continued in that life-
style for several years. Once it became clear that the part-time
arrangement was not God’s plan, and that I was supposed to
stay home full time, we were back to square one.
We thought we would have to move to a less expensive
community in order to live on my husband’s salary alone. So
that’s what we decided to do, but things changed at the last
minute. We made an offer on a house, and someone made an
offer on our home. One night I realized that I didn’t want my
husband commuting several hours each day, and I didn’t like
the idea of being so far away from our church and our friends.
We were able to get out of both house offers with no penalties.
But I had already quit my job. So there we were, living on half
of our income in an expensive area.
Our choices were either for me to go back to work or to
somehow reduce our expenses. But I knew I was supposed
to stay at home with my family, so instead of bringing in a
salary, I began to research how we could make our money go
further. This opened my eyes to the hidden costs in the way
we lived, and I questioned whether some people could even
afford to be working!
When we calculated what our loss of income would do to
our budget, we didn’t realize how many hidden costs would
disappear once I stopped working. Given the cost of child care,
taxes, gasoline, parking, convenience foods (we were often
too tired to cook after work), lunches out, office clothes, and
all the other amenities associated with working, not much of
our salaries were even used at home. I wasn’t alone in this
realization. I read that some financial experts had calculated
the cost of working as nine to twenty-five dollars per hour. I
was stunned! This meant that many of us who worked were
actually paying for the privilege of working. I was inspired
by the challenge of reducing our budget instead of increasing
our salary.
This book is not about how to make money at home. Many
other books have done a fine job of that. I’ve listed a few of
these books in “Additional Resources,” appendix B, for those
interested in pursuing this option.
Many books have been written on how to be thrifty. Some
are theoretical in their approach, filled with interviews with
other frugal people and impersonal statistics. Some are focused
on a specific way to save, such as reducing credit-card debt
or using grocery coupons. Others try to be broad but are too
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If I Can Do It,
You Can Do It
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Coming-Home Stories
WHAT SOME MOMS SAY ABOUT THEIR DECISION
T aking the plunge and quitting your job is a scary step. It’s
riddled with consequences and fears. Will we have enough
money? Am I doing the right thing?
Most women I talk to are glad they quit. Many reveal their
fears were unfounded, and that things were not as hard as they
expected. Almost all report seeing benefits in their children and
in themselves since being at home.
Coming home can bring a calm to the family: a peaceful
stability rather than a rushed schedule, and the kids can rely
on a parent to be there when they need her. There is nothing
more devastating to a child than being told he can’t come home
even though he doesn’t feel well because Mom doesn’t have any
more time off. The rewards of a job are fleeting compared to
the rewards of raising and shaping a future adult. But I don’t
want you to take only my word for it.
I get letters weekly from women who share their stories
of the transition from working mom to at-home mom or
mostly-at-home mom. They are heartening to anyone fear-
ing the changes coming home might bring. Following are a
few excerpts from these letters to encourage you. For more
SHELLY OF VIRGINIA
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KATE OF PENNSYLVANIA
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ELLEN OF OKLAHOMA
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hours and had a nice home, two cars, and plenty of extras.
Then I got pregnant. I wanted to stay at home as my mother
had, but we just couldn’t make the math work out. We had
decided that I would try working full time, but part of the
time in the office and part of the time telecommuting from
home.
Then, five days after our daughter was born, my husband
looked at me and said, “Whatever it takes, you’re not going
back to work.” How I had prayed for his cooperation in this
effort.
We slashed our budget. Took out all the extras. Stopped
eating out, no cell phone, no impulse shopping. I shop nice,
quality resale stores for clothes for all of us. It’s amazing what
you can do when you get creative and determined to make it all
work out! Our food bill is a constant challenge to me to find
new and cheaper options. Miserly Moms has recently given
me new incentive to get devoted to budget cutting again. And
I am so glad I’m the one raising my daughter—not an endless
rotation of child-care workers. In the beginning we were afraid
to even try. Now with an eighteen-month-old daughter, we
can’t imagine living any other way.
ANNE OF PENNSYLVANIA
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LISA OF CALIFORNIA
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And do you know what? Most of them are not any better off
than we are.
TERRI OF TEXAS
CHARLOTTE OF MASSACHUSETTS
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KELLY OF OREGON
TRACY OF ARIZONA
Resources
Home by Choice: Raising Emotionally Secure Children in an Insecure
World, Brenda Hunter (Multnomah Books, 2006).
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